Posted on 12/17/2022 10:00:20 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1878, John “Black Jack” Kehoe was hanged in Pottsville — as Pennsylvania’s anthracite trusts took a victory lap around the corpses of the Molly Maguires.
Even to say what the Mollies were is to take a side in their life-and-death struggle. Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine had poured into Pennsylvania’s coal mining country in the mid-19th century, where life in the mines was nasty, brutish and short, and the pay wasn’t anything to write home about either.
In a time when capital ruthlessly hunted any intimation of labor organizing and the Irish were a distinctly second-class people, the (apparent, or at least alleged) response of the Mollies was natural: form a secret society, and wring by threat of bodily harm the concessions it could not pursue by collective bargaining. For the recent Irish transplants, the tableau of a Catholic underclass working for a Protestant landlord who owned (and gouged on) everything in sight had a certain familiar feel.
Terrorists? They certainly used violence to achieve political objectives, at least if the testimony of their foes is credited. But they weren’t the only ones.
Mine owners turned public and private violence on Irish radicals pushing for things like the eight-hour day. The notorious strike-breaking Pinkerton Detective Agency was detailed to infiltrate the Mollies....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
The lesson did not stick.
Now we have the criminal AFL-CIO and many others of their ilk.
Look for the union label, then buy another brand instead.
Yes, I have personal experience with unions.
Me too. I was a ‘’member in good standing’’ years ago, back in the late ‘70’s and ‘80s in the Laborers Union in NJ/ NYC.
Bunch of low down hoods, all of them.
No union ever has, ever did or ever will create a single job.
Not one.
I grew up on the edge of Pennsylvania coal mine territory, not too far from Pottsville. (Home of that excellent Chinese beer Ying Ling!)
It is a wonderful melting pot of immigrants with diverse culture. Just in my lifetime I saw massive changes as TV homoginized these groups. Each community was a concentration of immigrants from a specific European country.
Traveling from one town to the next presented different languages, dialects, foods, religions, and culteral practices.
I’ll never forget a handmade sign in the front window of a coal town restaurant “We serve Hot Faggots.” These are meatballs made with heart, liver and some spices.
The onion topped churches, festivals, popularity of polkas, and good beer all remind me of southeastern Pennsylvania.
I still have friends living there who are the last of the active anthracite deep coal mining workers and mine owners. These guys are rugged survivors. Most are licensed to use explosives and love to drink, a dangerous combination. They all smoke like chimneys and live wild adventurous lives.
I’ve often said that if there were a nuclear holocaust I would head to this area where there are miles of interconnected mines. We used to joke that it should be the civil defense headquarters of the USA as if the enemy ever flew over the landscape looked like it had already been bombed!
The spirit of the Molly Maguires lives on. They are Trump supporters too.
“On June 21, 1877, twenty men linked to the secret organization called the “Molly Maguires” were hanged in the Carbon and Schuylkill county prisons for first degree murder. These men were sentenced to death by judges who were heavily influenced by powerful mining companies and the biased testimony of a spy, James McParlan. Today, these hangings have been recognized as unjustified, and in 1979 the state of Pennsylvania gave John Kehoe, the alleged king of the Molly Maguires, a full state pardon over a hundred years after his death. June 21, 1877, the sad day when twenty members of the Molly Maguires were hanged, has since been referred by the state of Pennsylvania as “Black Thursday.”
Excellent article at the above link.
“With the assistance of McParlan, the police were able to arrest over 60 men in 1875 accused of being linked to the Molly Maguires. These arrests made it possible to defeat the miners strike. Despite the strike ending, the mine owners wanted more. From 1875 to 1877 a series of trials were held in Pottsville, Pennsylvania to uncover alleged crimes committed by the Molly Maguires. Although the trials could not provide any evidence that the Molly Maguires actually existed, the media still referred to these men by that name. Since there was no evidence to link these men to the Molly Maguires, the men were tried as individuals. The trials resulted in 20 men being sentenced to hang. Emotions were so strongly against them that before they were executed, they were excommunicated from the Catholic Church and consequently denied a proper Christian burial.
During and after the trials, the local and national press had a field day at the Mollies expense. They compared the Molly Maguires to groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and stated, “floggings, lynchings and tar-and-feathers” were common practice for both groups. They demonized the Mollies, referring to them as “Black-riflemen,” portraying them as a gang of ruthless murderers. Very little truth ever came out of the media’s stories and these media tactics are now referred to as “yellow journalism.”
“The movie was made for hollywood.If you want a good history on the mollies read Lament for the Molly Maguires by Aurther H Lewis.”
>Very little truth ever came out of the media’s stories
Some things never change.
Sean Connery movie.
Great article. A lot to unpack. Kehoe’s great grand daughter was in my elementary school class and some of the nuns treated her as royalty. When people have their rights suffocated through legitimate or legal venues they resort to violence. The Catholic Church excommunicated the Molly Maguires (communion as weapon narrative complete BS). The NYT was anti Irish miner. BTW, NYT also pro Stalin. Yet, they are held out as the paragon of journalism? Finally, the miners exoneration took 150 years. That could happen to the political Pariahs of our time
Little bit of irony in this pro-Molly McGuire story.
Thirty years later, when the waves of immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe, Slavs, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Lithuanians, the Irish were put in charge as foremen and managers of the mines, collieries, and breakers because the were the immigrants who spoke English and could carry out the orders of the Protestant Anglo owners.
These once-persecuted Irish now showed they could be as mean and abusive as the bosses were to them a generation earlier.
There was no love lost between these Irish and the other immigrants in the coal fields for many years after.
Join the Union. You need two bosses
‘DIRTY MINES’ by John Fitzgerald, great historical novel about Anthracite coal mining. Also shines the light on the Crooked Pinkerton’s and the miscarriage of justice by the coal police and the Catholic Church. I not only learned, but I “felt” the experiences I read about.
In all, 24 mine foremen and supervisors were assassinated.
https://www.history.com/news/who-were-the-molly-maguires
Still a small fraction of those killed in the mines due to dangerous working conditions.
The Execution of the Columbia County Mollies
On March 25, 1878 Patrick Hester, Patrick Tully and Peter McHugh paid the ultimate price for the murder of Alexander W. Rea. The execution attracted more interest than the trial held over a year before that had condemned the three men.
https://library.bloomu.edu/Archives/SC/MollieMaguires/execution.htm
Rea’s body was found lying across the Northumberland/Columbia County line: the case was handled by Columbia County authorities.
Here is s history of the Molly Maguires in Northumberland County.
Shamokin, Mt.Carmel, Gowen City, Locust Gap.....
http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/northumberland/areahistory/mollymag.txt
I took a graduate course in the “History of Labor” at Bloomsburg University. We covered this topic thoroughly as it was hometown history.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Wow.
Thank you, for the link.
Looks like a interesting read.
Needing to get a cup of tea or coffee and then will peruse it.
Again, thank you, for the link.
Wow.
Thank you, for the link.
Looks like a interesting read.
Needing to get a cup of tea or coffee and then will peruse it.
Again, thank you, for the link.
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